Op-ed: How can architecture firms adjust to the future of hybrid work?

From reimagining city spaces to designing sustainable buildings, architecture firms and designers are tackling complex projects while navigating the remote workplace. But as we slowly return to what work life used to be before the pandemic, many of us have already adapted to a hybrid work environment. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), 87

Expo 2020’s Brazil Pavilion brings the Amazon basin to the Arabian Desert

For those on the ground at Expo 2020 Dubai looking to transport themselves to a far-flung tropical locale without leaving a once-barren expanse of desert abutting the Persian Gulf, the Brazil Pavilion has got you covered. Just don’t forget to bring aquatic footwear. Located in the Sustainability District between the Sweden Pavilion and the Azerbaijan

Habitat for Humanity debuts the world’s first 3D-printed owner-occupied home in Virginia

Earlier this week, additive construction company Alquist and Habitat for Humanity formally handed over the keys to the new owner of an otherwise ordinary-looking three-bedroom single-family home in Williamsburg, Virginia. Despite appearances, however, that building was recently completed as the first Habitat project on the East Coast to be constructed with the aid of a

ACADIA 2021 put the focus squarely on the human side

Following a highly successful shift to a totally virtual experience in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACADIA (The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture), once again held their annual conference online in 2021. Titled “Realignments: Toward Critical Computation,” this year’s proceedings marked the 40th anniversary of a conference that brings together practitioners,

Two new book and film projects take the contemplative approach to the climate crisis

The mid-20th-century writer and philosopher Marshall McLuhan first used the phrase “the medium is the message” in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. For McLuhan, the content of a television series or a picture book was less impactful than the way the message itself was delivered. In that same book he distinguished

El Salvador wants to build a Bitcoin city at the base of a volcano

After changing its national currency to Bitcoin and enforcing mandatory acceptance at businesses in September, El Salvador is looking to up the ante by building a “Bitcoin City” at the base of Conchagua volcano in the country’s eastern La Union region. Announced by President Nayib Bukele on November 20 as part of a weeklong promotional

The Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building awakens for a glimpse of the FUTURES

What do a cloned ferret, a Bakelite baby monitor, biodegradable burial pods, genderless voice assistants, a century-old artificial limb, and a deli case stuffed with fake meat all have in common? They’re all among the dizzying assemblage of innovations past and speculative designs imagining a cleaner, greener, and more inclusive tomorrow showcased at the new

The HiLo module at Zurich’s NEST pairs ancient building concepts with futuristic construction

NEST, an ever-evolving experimental structure that serves as a testbed for emerging construction and energy technologies, has gained its eighth and newest temporary building module. The eclectic agglomerate sits on the shared campus of Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) and Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) in the

Parametric Architecture’s Computational Design: NEXT 6.0 digs deep into the futrue

You’d be forgiven if, upon hearing the terminology quad-based remeshing, ngon-based meshes, open topologies, and tropisms, you wondered if you had been slipped the Zoom link to presentations of thesis dissertations at the ETH Zurich and not Parametric Architecture’s Computational Design: NEXT 6.0 conference. While we may begrudgingly add another webcast event to our calendars,

A CLT timber home under construction in miami

A look into Southern Florida’s growing timber culture

Miami-Dade County is known for its art deco buildings, subtropical climate, and a youthful exuberance ready to embrace the moment as exemplified by Maurizio Cattelan’s 2019 Banana at Art Basel. Miami-Dade is also notorious for hurricanes, looming sea level rise, and pioneering rigorous structural building codes coined the “Dade County Code” that set global standards

Mars, before blood-hued concrete structures rise across its surface

Could future Martian colonists build concrete habitats with their own blood?

NASA, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), SEarch+ and Apis Cor, and a host of other governmental bodies and design firms have made the news of late for proposals to 3D print Martian habitats from locally sourced regolith in-situ. These sorts of schemes all focus on easy-to-transport methods of construction with materials already on the Red Planet

SOM debuts robotically fabricated timber pavilion at the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial

In addition to the core exhibitions and dozen-plus commissioned architectural interventions now on view and activated at predominately city-owned vacant lots during the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial, over 100 civic, educational, and cultural partners have launched a range of events—exhibitions, installations, lectures, tours, and more—to coincide with the central festival programming. Among these complementary festival

Outdoor landscape and several fans attached to large box at a carbon capture facility

World’s largest carbon capture facility opens in Iceland

Europe has, as of late, become the site of robust environmental technological developments designed to reduce global waste and carbon emissions, from BIG’s waste-to-power plant in Copenhagen to a proposal for a mass timber neighborhood in Sweden. As of last Wednesday, it has also become the site of the latest advancement in carbon capture technology. 

single story structure in grassy field printed by icon

ICON completes largest 3D-printed structure in North America for the Texas Military Department

In the last few years, 3D printing has become an increasingly plausible construction technique for the building industry thanks to the innovations of companies like ICON, a Texas-based robotics and advanced materials startup. This year alone, ICON has developed a house with Lake|Flato Architects, a mass-market development with real estate developer 3Strands, and collaborated with

block of steel in factory

Swedish company HYBRIT delivers first carbon-free steel to the Volvo Group

For the last few years, the building industry has sought environmentally-friendly alternatives to steel production, estimated to cause 8 percent of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions annually. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) and other structural materials have been considered as relatively non-intensive stand-ins for the tried and true medium, leaving nearly a quarter of all steel companies

the Mars Dune Alpha being 3d printed in a hangar

BIG and ICON’s latest collaboration is 3D printing NASA’s next long-term Mars habitat

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Texan robotics and advanced materials company ICON have revealed their latest collaboration, the 3D-printed Mars Dune Alpha. The experimental habitat will be used by NASA to simulate long-term missions to Mars and document the effects on participants. As part of the space agency’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA)

Exterior of the lunark pod in greenland, designed by saga space architects

SAGA Space Architects asks how we might live comfortably on the Moon

In September of 2020, Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sorensen, founders of SAGA Space Architects, embarked on a three-month mission to Northern Greenland in hopes of simulating the experience of living on the Moon. Drawing inspiration from the tradition of origami folding and the form of a budding leaf, SAGA designed a habitat specifically for the

a man walking up stairs onto a concrete footbridge bridge, striatus

Zaha Hadid Architects and Block Research Group unveil a swooping 3D-printed concrete bridge in Venice

A freestanding, unreinforced pedestrian bridge built from 53 3D-printed concrete blocks is now open for leisurely foot traffic in Venice. Although Striatus doesn’t carry pedestrians over one of the city’s famed canals, this first-of-its-kind structure is now open for park-bound traversing at the leafy Giardino della Marinaressa during the run of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. The roughly 40-by-52-foot arched footbridge was

sign for williamsburg

Habitat for Humanity and Alquist partner for the East Coast’s first 3D-printed Habitat home

Just weeks after it announced a partnership with the Virginia Center for Housing Research at Virginia Tech to design, build, and study America’s first 3D-printed, private-public partnership grant-funded single-family home in Richmond, Alquist has revealed another unprecedented project underway in Williamsburg, Virginia. This time, it’s the East Coast’s first 3D-printed Habitat for Humanity dwelling. The project, spearheaded by additive construction company Alquist with Habitat for

image of the building at sunset, the Hans Rosling Center, clad in glass fins

The Hans Rosling Center’s glass and aluminum fins embody the university’s health initiative

Facade Manufacturer Elicc Group Architect Miller Hull Partnership Structural engineer KPFF Consulting Engineers Civil engineer KPFF Consulting Engineers General Contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis Location Seattle Facade Installer Elicc Group Date October 2020 System 36″ Glass fins and 8″ aluminum fins on unitized curtain wall system Products Curtainwall and exterior shading by Elicc Group, precast concrete

a man operates a 3D printer at a construction site labeled Habitat for Humanity on the pump

Habitat for Humanity kicks off work on its first 3D-printed U.S. home in Tempe, Arizona

In Arizona, the state with the fourth most dire affordable housing shortage according to National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC)’s recently released Gap report, the Central Arizona chapter of global nonprofit Habitat for Humanity is looking to pave the way for new modes of sustainable, scalable low-cost housing across the Grand Canyon State. How? With the aid of ample local largesse and a

Image of Arroyo Bridge spanning an L.A. Canyon

The Arroyo Bridge spans an L.A. canyon with a robot-fabricated steel structure

Over the last few years, the Los Angeles area has seen a great influx of infrastructural and placemaking projects that emphasize the status of the pedestrian within the city, ranging from Frank Gehry’s reenvisioning of the L.A. River to the ongoing construction of Destination Crenshaw. The Arroyo Bridge, which wrapped up construction at the beginning of the pandemic but was only recently

rendering of a single-level home

Alquist and Virginia Tech team up for America’s first 3D-printed, public-private partnership-funded home

Additive construction company Alquist and the Virginia Center for Housing Research (VCHR) at Virginia Tech have partnered to design, build, and study a 3D-printed single-family home that’s the first of its kind in the United States: funded by a private-public partnership grant. Work on the three-bedroom, 1,550-square-foot home broke ground earlier this week at 217 Carnation Street in Richmond’s Midlothian neighborhood.

rendering of a ranch-style 3d-printed home

ICON teams with Lake|Flato Architects for a 3D-printed, ADU-equipped Austin home

ICON, the Texas-based robotics and advanced materials construction company with lunar ambitions, has announced a new series of (earthbound) 3D-printed homes designed in collaboration with a slew of top architects. San Antonio- and Austin-based Lake|Flato Architects is the first to be tapped for the so-called Exploration Series, which according to ICON, will “develop new design languages and architectural vernaculars” with collaborating architects